Governor Bill Haslam announced Wednesday he would seek additional flexibility for teachers as the state continues its transition to the TNReady student assessment.
Under the proposal, teachers would have the choice to include or not to include student results from the 2015-2016 TNReady assessment in his or her evaluation score, which typically consists of multiple years of data. The proposal keeps student learning and accountability as factors in an educator’s evaluation while giving teachers the option to include this year’s results if the results benefit them.
The governor will work with the General Assembly on specific language and a plan to move the proposal through the legislative process.
“Tennessee students are showing historic progress. The state made adjustments to teacher evaluation and accountability last year to account for the transition to an improved assessment fully aligned with Tennessee standards, which we know has involved a tremendous amount of work on the part of our educators,” Governor Haslam said. “Given recent, unexpected changes in the administration of the new assessment, we want to provide teachers with additional flexibility for this first year’s data.”
Officials said Tennessee has led the nation with a teacher evaluation model that has played a vital role in the state’s unprecedented progress in education. Tennessee students are the fastest improving students in the country since 2011. The state’s graduation rate has increased three years in a row, standing at 88 percent. Since 2011, 131,000 more students are on grade-level in math and nearly 60,000 more on grade-level in science.
The plan builds upon the Teaching Evaluation Enhancement Act proposed by the governor and approved by the General Assembly last year. This year is the first administration of TNReady, which is fully aligned with the state’s college and career readiness benchmarks.
“Providing teachers with the flexibility to exclude first-year TNReady data from their growth score over the course of this transition will both directly address many concerns we have heard and strengthen our partnership with educators while we move forward with a new assessment,” Department of Education Commissioner Candice McQueen said. “Regardless of the test medium, TNReady will measure skills that the real world will require of our students.”
Most educator evaluations have three main components: qualitative data, which includes principal observations and always counts for at least half of an educator’s evaluation; a student achievement measure that the educator chooses; and a student growth score, which usually comprises 35 percent of the overall evaluation.